Brian M Downing
Concern that North Korea is endangering regional security and prosperity is bringing unexpected cooperation between the US and China. An outcome isn’t at hand, nor is an era of Sino-American partnership in world affairs. However, the two powers, though at odds on matters of trade and territoriality, share interests in a few parts of the world. Afghanistan might be one of them.
The US has been fighting the Taliban for many years. It’s now reintroducing troops to counter an impending offensive. The Chinese have been investing there for many years. They own licenses to extract iron, copper, oil, and rare earths and export them, through Chinese-built infrastructure, to world markets. The US won’t admit it but it’s has been protecting Chinese enterprises for many years.
The US would benefit from a settlement which would reduce a long, costly commitment in a landlocked Central Asian country. China would benefit from greater economic growth there. What can they do?
Pakistan
Pakistani generals have used Sino-American tensions as a way to negotiate more money and arms from both countries. However, it’s increasingly plain that the generals, by their support for the Taliban and a slew of Islamist militant groups in eastern Afghanistan, are obstacles to regional stability and prosperity.
The generals have resisted American pressure to end support, with only limited success. China now sees Pakistan as contributing to an Islamist tide in Central Asia and western China. The Uighurs of Xianjing province are gravitating toward Islamist militancy and serving with such forces in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.
Coordinated pressure on Pakistan can in time force the Taliban to limit its goals. It will have to accept controlling only parts of Afghanistan and forego any notion of reconquering the bulk of the country and spreading militancy into adjacent lands. Further, it will have to end its zealously internationalist factions and eradicate jihadi groups inside Afghanistan.
Pakistan may now be more amenable now to abandoning militant client-groups. Though militants train guerrillas for the fight with India in Kashmir, they are turning on their backers and striking inside Pakistan. Their reach has extended from the Af-Pak frontier and Pashtun tribal regions to deep inside the Punjab.
Afghanistan
The US wants to see a fair political system, China is less high-minded. Beijing did not gain control of the country’s natural resources through competitive bids. It did so by bribing figures in the Kabul government. If Washington has any lingering hopes for democratizing the country, it must abandon them. It should work with Beijing on political reform that fits Afghan political traditions.
Afghanistan’s troubles come when the central government extends its reach into the provinces, upsetting venerable political traditions. This is what happened in the late seventies when an ill-advised modernization program was launched. Rebellions flared, Soviet troops had to rush in. Today, corrupt and inept Kabul officials have similarly crossed local sensibilities. In parts of the country, locals merely despise Kabul. In others, they support the Taliban.
Peace and prosperity have come when an outside power such as Britain or Russia has handed over money to figures in Kabul who were judicious enough to avoid angering locals. They distributed the money to ethnic and tribal leaders for disbursement and thereby maintained a balance between center and periphery.
The US and China cannot reform the Kabul government, not into western democracy, not into state capitalism. They can, however, see that their money is channeled in ways that reassert the center-periphery balance.
Sino-American aid could one day be directed into Taliban-controlled areas in the south and east. These districts have been devastated by thirty-five years of war and are in desperate need of development. The Taliban can be enticed to suppress ISIL and al Qaeda pockets in the east.
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The US can build a measure of trust with China and move toward an alternative to the emerging Sino-Russian partnership in world affairs. From Beijing’s perspective, Russia might not be a reliable ally in a decade or so. Its economy lacks dynamism and depends on oil prices. The Russian military cannot project power as well as the US’s can. And political order will depend on Putin’s finding a suitable figure to hand power to, avoiding the succession crises that have plagued the country since the times of the early tsars.
Copyright 2017 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.